Booker prize shortlist revealed
Bookshops will be stocking up the six shortlisted novels
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Thursday, 14, Sep 2006 07:28
The six novels which have made it onto the shortlist for the Man Booker prize for fiction have been revealed in London.
Among the six shortlisted are The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, The Secret River by Kate Grenville and Carry Me Down by M. J. Hyland.
The remaining contenders for the UK's foremost literary prize for English writing are In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar, Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters.
"Each of these novels has what we as judges were most looking for, a distinctive original voice, an audacious imagination that takes readers to undiscovered countries of the mind, a strong power of story-telling and a historical truthfulness," Hermione Lee, the chair of judges, explained.
"Each of these novels creates a world you inhabit without question or distrust while you are reading, and a mood, an atmosphere, which lasts long after the reading is over."
Authors on the shortlist will not just be interested in the £50,000 prize the winner ultimately inherits, as last year's winner, John Banville, will testify.
His novel The Sea benefited from the massive publicity brought by its Man Booker prize victory in sales in the nation's bookshops, shifting almost a quarter of a million copies.